K.M. Adimoolam trained at the influential School of Art and Craft in Chennai and was part of the Madras Art Movement of the 1970s. He was a brilliant draughtsman; his early works include a highly celebrated series of portraits of Mahatma Gandhi.
Adimoolam shifted to painting with oil in the 1970s and moved towards abstraction. His vibrant and optimistic works, in his words, "…mirror my mind's journey through Nature - not as realistic landscapes or seascapes but planes of colours…."